


with you i serve; with you i fall down

by actualbluesargent



Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: Alex and Reggie are dead, Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Drift Compatibility, F/M, Luke is sad but ultimately is a golden retriever puppy around bad ass julie molina, or are they?, ray is marshal pentecost and it's only a little weird i promise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:53:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27787810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/actualbluesargent/pseuds/actualbluesargent
Summary: Two and a half years ago, in what was supposed to be a standard mission, Luke lost his two co-pilots, and swore off being a Jaeger pilot. Until Marshal Ray Molina shows up and convinces him to come back for One Last Ride to save the world.He doesn't think it was possible for him to be anyone else's co-pilot, until he meets Julie Molina, and suddenly the sun is shining again, and Luke feels alive.a pacific rim au.
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Comments: 17
Kudos: 50





	with you i serve; with you i fall down

**Author's Note:**

> i love julie and the phantoms, and pacific rim is one of my favourite movies of all time, so of course this au had to happen. this is mostly gonna be julie/luke focused and not so much on plot, so hopefully you won't need to have seen pacific rim to follow what's going on. but you should watch it, because it's great.

Two and a half years ago, Luke Patterson died doing the thing he loved. 

Okay, not exactly. Let’s try that again. 

Two and a half years ago, Luke Patterson went up against a hurricane of flesh with his two best friends, and lost. 

Two and a half years ago, Luke Patterson stepped into his Jaeger, a hulking beauty of machinery called Sunset Curve alongside his co-pilots, Alex and Reggie, the only people who made him feel like a whole person and not just a ball of nerves and potential energy. They marched together into the wailing Pacific Ocean, in what was supposed to a standard mission. They were to take on the monstrous kaiju that had crawled from the Breach, the portal between dimensions that manifested in a crack in the ocean floor. 

It was supposed to be a standard mission.

Two and a half years ago, Luke Patterson was nearly sucked into a portal within dimensions, and while he made it out, he felt his two best friends get ripped from him like someone tore out his heart.

Two and a half years ago, Luke Patterson died alongside the only people he loved.

So he doesn’t know what he’s still doing here.

He especially doesn’t know what he’s doing in a rundown bar in Sitka, Alaska.

In terms of gigs he’s played, entertaining the workers from the Wall of Life ranks probably closest to the bottom. The Wall of Life is a particularly cruel mistress, because despite how pleasant the idea of Building a Giant Wall to Keep the Aliens Out sounds, they’ve proven basically ineffective. But still it’s being built, so someone’s gotta build it, and as far as Luke’s concerned, someone’s gotta keep those workers entertained. 

Granted, the workers are always exhausted, so they’re an inattentive audience at best, and they also stink, because while you get rations for working the wall, there’s nothing in the contract about showering facilities. 

Not that Luke’s in a real place to judge, if he’s being honest.

Still, tonight is particularly lousy, because not even five minutes into his set there’s a roaring commotion outside, something that sounds like an honest-to-god helicopter. The part of him that has played through brawls and bar-fights is ready to just play louder, but he gets a glimpse through a window of a near-horde of soldiers outside, and he’ll admit, his curiosity is piqued.

Before he can debate abandoning his chances for tips, the door swings open, letting the cold Alaskan wind blast through. In the doorway stood the silhouette of a man Luke had pretty much been counting on never seeing again. His hair is flecked with more grey than Luke remembered, and the years of command were evident in the lines on his face, but for all intents and purposes, Marshal Ray Molina could have stepped right out of his life from two and a half years ago. 

“Mr. Patterson,” he says, as soldiers file into the room, ushering out the patrons of the bar. 

“Marshal,” he replies, lifting his guitar strap from over his head and laying it gently in its case. “Step into my office.”

“You weren’t easy to find, Patterson,” Molina says, moving through the bar like a naval warship through the ocean. Purposeful, steady, militant. “I would have thought the income working the wall would be more stable than playing for tips at - ” he looks around the decrepit bar. “Whatever this place is.”

“Yeah, but I don’t really like my chances on the Wall of Death,” Luke says. “The only time they have job openings is because some poor sucker freezes to death at the top of the wall or they fall off.” 

“So every other day,”

Luke shoulders his guitar case. “Yeah, so I’ll take my chances playing for other people’s rations.”

Molina raises his eyebrows, unamused. In another life, he could have been a completely different person, Luke thinks. He has kind eyes, though they’re offset by the hard lines caused by the Kaiju War. He could have been a photographer, or something. But instead he’s standing in a bar for swearing wall workers deep in Alaska, talking to a washed-up Jaeger pilot.

“What do you want, Marshal?”

“I’m activating everything I can get my hands on. I have an old Mark III, Dahlia Phantom. It’s a two-pilot operating system. Needs a pilot.”

Intellectually, Luke knew Molina wouldn’t be showing up here unless he was desperate, but he still can’t believe the words coming from his mouth. He wants Luke to come  _ back? _ To be a pilot again? To step into a Jaeger and share his mind, his  _ soul _ with a total stranger?

He respects the Marshal too much to tell him to go fuck himself, so instead he says, “There’s no way I was your first choice.”

“You were my first choice,” Molina says, a grave seriousness in his voice. “All the other Mark III pilots are dead.” 

Luke feels his chest tear in two. He can’t get back in a Jaeger. He has to. He can’t fight a kaiju again. He can’t imagine doing anything else.

What do you do when the thing you know you were  _ born for _ is taken away from you?

“Look, Marshal,” he says. “I felt Alex and Reggie’s pain when they died. When they were torn from the Jaeger, I could feel everything they felt. Their fear, their sadness. I can’t do that again. I’m sorry.”

“Patterson. I knew you boys when you were just knucklehead trainee pilots, trying for the best simulator score,” he says, looking into Luke’s eyes, and there’s that kindness. “We’re fighting against the end of the world. Do you think Alex and Reggie would want you on the sidelines?”

He thinks of Alex, who never let them go back to base until all civilians were safe. Of Reggie, who came up with stupid nicknames for all the kaijus they encountered. Of the way they had fought together, three parts of one whole. 

He swallows. “When do we leave?”

From above, he can see the Hong Kong base is a nucleus of movement, dozens of people like ants in the rain, moving in undistinguishable patterns but all leaving space for the Marshal’s roaring helicopter. 

_ Boys, check it out. The world keeps turning. _

Against all odds, he feels something like excitement taking root in his stomach. Out of the window he can see a lone figure standing with an umbrella, obviously waiting for them. He looks to Molina, to see if he’ll give any hint as to what he could expect from the Hong Kong base, but he’s silent. 

When they land, the Marshal is first off the helicopter, launching himself into the pouring rain like it was a warm shower. Luke follows him into the rain, towards the solitary figure standing with what turns out to be two umbrellas, one which she hands to the Marshal. 

Luke doesn’t recognise her, which really doesn’t mean anything. The Jaeger program might be on its last legs now, but two years ago there were hundreds of people in the Anchorage base alone. There were some people he saw every day who he probably wouldn’t recognise today.

Up close, though, he’s certain he’s never seen her before, because there’s no way he wouldn’t remember this girl. She looks maybe a year younger than him, and there’s something in the way she carries herself that draws all his attention. He’s vaguely aware of the Marshal handing him one of the umbrellas, but he’s basically rooted to the spot.

“Mr. Patterson,” Marshal Molina says, “This is my daughter, Julie.” 

Luke looks at the Marshal in shock. In all the time he’d served under him, Marshal Molina had never mentioned a daughter. Although, considering the fact that this is the first thing he’s  _ ever _ heard about the Marshal’s personal life, he doesn’t know why he’s surprised.

Marshal Molina either doesn’t notice his surprise, or doesn’t care. “She’s also in charge of the Mark III restoration program. She personally hand-picked your co-pilot candidates.”

The Marshal’s words register, but only dimly in the back of his mind. Julie, he said her name was. She’s looking up at him with dark brown eyes, assessing, patient. He manages to give her a nervous smile.

“ _ You’re _ Luke Patterson?” she says, raising an eyebrow.

“The one and only.”

“I thought you’d be - ”

“Older? I get that a lot.”

“I was going to say less like a boy band member from the ‘90s, but sure,” she says it while smiling, so he still takes an immediate liking to her. If he hadn’t already. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

He nearly lets out a laugh, before remembering that while he might feel like a punk-kid-turned-has-been, he, Alex and Reggie were on their way to becoming legends. Luckily, he doesn’t need to think of a response, because the Marshal takes his silence as an opportunity to lead them into the base.

The Hong Kong Shatterdome is simultaneously exactly like every other Shatterdome he’s been in and nothing like them at all. The metal walls have rust creeping along them, and there’s a frantic, nervous energy in nearly everyone he passes. He hasn’t even been out of commission for three years, and the entire landscape of the fight against the kaijus has changed. 

The Marshal and his daughter lead him through the noisy Shatterdome floor, where Jaegers he doesn’t recognise tower over them, complete with crews and pilots he doesn’t know. The Marshal points them all out, complete with their piloting teams. It doesn’t escape Luke that he seems to be the only one showing up as part of an incomplete set. It also doesn’t escape him that, including his, there are only four Jaegers left in the  _ world. _ It makes his blood run cold.

“We’re no longer an army, Mr. Patterson,” the Marshal says when he brings this up. “We’re the resistance.”

This is further evidenced when Luke meets their ‘research division’, which seems to consist of two bickering scientists, Flynn and Carrie. In Luke’s book, the only thing scarier than one mad scientist was two mad scientists. Or angry scientists, if the way they argued was any indicator. His introduction to them is brief, but he doesn’t miss one of them - Flynn, he thinks? - referring to him as  _ eye candy _ to the Marshal’s daughter. Whether Julie agrees or not he doesn’t hear, because the Marshal continues with his tour before she gets a chance to respond.

Not that Luke cares. 

If he’s being honest, the entire time they’re on the Shatterdome floor, meeting with the other pilots, at least twenty percent of Luke’s attention is on Julie. She keeps an even pace with her father as they move through the sea of people and machines, and around her, the Marshal seems softer, and again Luke gets a vision of the kind of man he would be if not for the Breach. He doesn’t let his mind wander too far down that road, though, because typically his “if not for the Breach” fantasies end with him in a band with Alex and Reggie, and it hurts too much to think about.

When the Marshal finally tells him the plan, he’s floored. There’s no room for second-guessing, but having a man, who up until this point Luke considered sane, tell him the mission plan was to strap a warhead to the back of one of the Jaegers and dropping it into the Breach was more than a little unsettling. He has a million questions, a million things to say. They’ve tried to hit the Breach before - what changed? 

But despite how soft the Marshal might be around his daughter, the look in his eyes invited no further questions. 

So Luke just followed Julie as she took him to see his new Jaeger.

“There she is,” Julie says, pointing him in the direction of his new Jaeger. Luke feels all the air leave his body. They’re at least two dozen feet above the ground, but still Dahlia Phantom towers over them, a glowing mechanical monster. He can see technicians on rigs doing their little adjustments, sparks flying from all around, but she still looks magnificent. 

When Luke was a kid, which feels like a lifetime ago, he would ditch school with Alex and Reggie and sneak into the San Diego Shatterdome, and see them maintaining the Jaegers. They basically knew nothing about how Jaegers worked, but they were still drawn to their cores. To their hearts.

It’s a feeling that never goes away, a type of awe that seems to realign all he knows about his place in the universe. It’s a little like the drift; a feeling of connection to something other than yourself.

It’s why he became a pilot. When something makes you feel like that, there’s no way you can do anything else.

It’d been so long, he had almost forgotten what it felt like.

It takes him a second to snap out of the sensation of awe that fills him down to his toes. Dahlia Phantom. He knows this Jaeger. He fought alongside it. He looks over at Julie, and sees her watching him, her gaze calculating.

“This was Marshal Molina’s Jaeger,” he says.

“She was,” she nods. If she picks up on the shock in his voice, she doesn’t address it. “She was out of commission since - since one of the attacks off the coast of Hawaii. Now they’ve fitted her with a double core nuclear reactor.”

Luke lets out a low whistle. “She’s one of a kind,”

Julie’s face is serious when she says, “She always was.”

And just like that, he knows she’s a pilot, or at least that she  _ should be _ . He sneaks a look at her, and sees her eyes fully focused on Dahlia Phantom. If this was her dad’s Jaeger, she must have expected to be the one to pilot it. Maybe she would; maybe she was one of his co-pilot candidates. He doesn’t know why, but he really wants her to be.

Maybe it’s because the intensity she looks at Dahlia Phantom with feels familiar, and he knows it’s how he looked at Sunset Curve. She’s a pilot in her bones, he can just tell. 

Alex would tell him to  _ chill the fuck out. _

So he doesn’t say anything.

Until he can’t take it anymore, which is approximately the time it takes for them to leave the main Shatterdome floor and for her to lead him to his room.

Well, that’s not true. He unloads his duffel bag onto the bare mattress, and goes to start unpacking, but when he opens it, the first thing he finds is an old  _ Pilot’s Manual, _ with a photograph peaking out.

“My room’s actually right across the hall,” Julie is saying, but for the first time since they met, his attention isn’t on her. 

It’s a picture of him with Reggie and Alex, the day they graduated from the Jaeger academy. All three of them look so young, his heart catches in his throat. They’re all in their cadets’ uniforms, but somehow they still look a little scruffy. Luke’s jacket is open, meaning the holes left in his shirt from the sleeves he cut off are visible; Reggie’s jacket is nowhere to be seen and Alex has a bandana pushing his long hair back. They’re grinning wide at the camera, and a part of him aches. They were going to be something great. 

He wipes away a runaway tear on his cheek, glad his back is to Julie. He turns to her.

“So what’s your deal? Marshal’s daughter, there’s no way all they have you doing is helping to restore Jaegers. Are you a pilot?” 

“No, not yet,” she says, and he can see a flicker of what he thinks is sadness in her eyes. “But I want to be one. It’s complicated, though.”

“I’ll bet. What’s your simulator score?”

“Fifty-one drops, fifty-one kills,” she says, and she obviously can’t stop herself from smiling as she says it, like she knows she’s awesome. He can get behind that kind of attitude. 

“Dude, that’s amazing!” he takes a step towards her, like he’s about to high-five her, but then remembers that he Does Not Know Her. “You’ve gotta be one of the candidates tomorrow.”

She clutches her clipboard closer to her chest. “I’m not.”

“You’re kidding me,” he says, and he hopes his disappointment isn’t too obvious. 

Her tone is almost apologetic when she says, “The Marshal has his reasons.”

“I guess he always does,” Luke concedes, “But with fifty one kills, I gotta wonder what they could be.”

He studies her face, hoping she’ll give something away, but other than a glimmer of regret, he gets nothing. It can’t just be that she’s the Marshal’s daughter, right? There’s no way he’d let that get in the way of real talent.

“Anyway, I hope you like my choices. I studied your fighting techniques and strategies, even - ” she stops herself, and though he knows that sentence ends with Alaska, the usual rolling emotions that threaten to knock him over like a wave don’t feel as strong. Maybe it’s because he was already partially exposed to it. Maybe it’s because when Julie is speaking, he gets a glimpse of a little gap between her two front teeth.

“What did you think?”

“I think - ” she pauses, like she’s gathering her thoughts. “I think sometimes your enthusiasm gets in the way of your practicality. You make choices that you probably wouldn’t if you thought about them for longer. Sometimes you’ll go on full offense when all you need is defense, endangering yourself for no reason. I don’t know if you’re the right man for this job.”

He won’t lie, it hurts a little. But still, he’s a grown up. Just because a cute girl doesn’t think he’s the Jaeger pilot for Molina’s crackpot plan, it doesn’t mean she’s right. Even if looking into her warm brown eyes makes him want her approval above anything.

“I appreciate the honesty, I guess,” he says, and when he looks down, he realises he’s still holding the picture of him with Reggie and Alex. “I know I’ve made my mistakes.”

Her hand flexes slightly, as if she was about to reach out for him and thought better of it. “That’s not what I meant. I didn’t mean to make it sound like - ”

“You didn’t make it sound like anything. I know I’m a reckless pilot,” he says, and he tries out a smile to keep the atmosphere from getting too heavy. “I know the consequences of that. All I can do now is try and do better, right?”

He doesn’t really want her to answer, too caught up in the emotions of it all. Her footsteps echo across the metal floor as she leaves. When he hears her door open, he goes to continue unpacking the duffel bag he managed to grab before leaving with the Marshal, and realises that he hasn’t changed his clothes since before leaving Alaska. Not wanting to think about how he must  _ smell, _ he quickly pulls his sweater and t-shirt off. He rolls his shoulders, and has a quick glance at the scars that cross his chest and arms. Considering his co-pilots  _ died _ in the Jaeger attack, he got off pretty easily, but he can still remember how long the tear in his shoulder from the kaiju’s serrated claw took to heal. 

He looks up from his arms, and sees he’s left his door open. Across the hallway, Julie is standing in her own doorway, and she is definitely staring. The second they make eye-contact she shuts the door, but he knows what being gawked at looks like. While usually he’d appreciate being checked out by a cute girl, the scars that two years later still haven’t healed make him feel uncomfortably bare. For good measure, he slams his own door shut. 

The sparring dojo is nothing like the one he, Alex and Reggie had trained in, but the stale smell of sweat is the same. Luke would never admit it under pain of  _ death, _ but there’s something reassuring about having the sparring staff in his hands, his bare feet on the dojo floor. 

He doesn’t regret leaving the Jaeger program when he did, but here, as he gets ready to go up against the candidates Julie chose, he realises he never felt as at home than he does when getting ready for a fight.

Alex would remind him that sparring to test potential for drift compatibility is meant to be a dialogue, not a fight. 

But Alex isn’t here.

Instead, Luke is watched over by Julie and her father. It is still so weird to him that Marshal Molina has a daughter. She stands next to her father with a clipboard, probably to judge his potential co-pilots. He tried to catch her eye when he walked in, to try and convey something like an apology for being a dick the day before, but she’s strictly business. Not that he cares, he was just trying to be polite. 

A part of him still thinks she should be one of the candidates. He can feel it in his bones, just like he felt it with Alex and Reggie. Just being around her, something felt right.

And it’s not just that she’s cute.

He whirls his staff around in his hands as he eyes up the candidates. They all seem the same height and build as him, which he knows helps with drift compatibility. You need to be able to keep up with your pilot, both physically and mentally. Three pilot teams like him, Alex and Reggie are rare, because finding three people who are in sync like that is near impossible. Looking at all these candidates, he doesn’t know if he’ll be compatible with any of them. He doesn’t want to know what will happen if that’s the case.

Molina clears his throat from the top of the room, “Begin.”

Luke bounces on the balls of his feet, ready for his first taste of anything like combat in nearly three years.

And it’s… underwhelming. Each candidate is strong, and talented, sure, but they’re also  _ boring. _ They’re predictable, never straying from the easy sparring techniques you learn in your first few months at the academy. They have no imagination, and he knocks nearly all of them to the ground with minimal effort. One of them Luke catches under the knee with his staff and flips onto his front. He’s not even trying to show off, he genuinely just isn’t challenged by them, and your pilot is supposed to be your equal. 

Something about the whole thing must not agree with Julie though, because every time he sends one of her personally-chosen candidates to the ground, the corners of her mouth tilt down, just slightly. In the back of his mind he can still hear her voice, “I don’t think you’re the right man for the job.”

He wants to prove her wrong. Not that the dojo is the place for that. 

“I’m sorry, do you have some sort of problem?”

Julie blinks at him. “Excuse me?”

“I thought you selected these candidates personally, but every time a match ends it’s like you're critical of their performance, and you make this face.” He demonstrates by imitating an (admittedly over-exaggerated) version of her little expression. He’s aware of Marshal Molina’s eyes on him, but no part of him can focus on anyone in that room  _ but _ Julie.

“That is not my face,” she says.

He scrunches his nose. “It’s your face.”

She doesn’t look amused. “It doesn’t matter, because it’s not them that’s the problem, it’s you.”

He lets out a laugh. “Me?”

“Yes, you. You could have taken all of them two moves earlier.”

Well. She continues to surprise him.   
“You think so?”

“I know so.”

He bites his lip on a smile as an idea takes shape in his head. He looks at Molina. “Can we switch this up? How about we give her a shot?”

Luke holds his staff out, pointing to Julie, and he feels the air still as the candidates behind him hold their breath. Julie looks to the Marshal with what Luke thinks is hope. 

The Marshal doesn’t even blink. “No, stick to the candidates we have, Patterson. They’re the only candidates of drift compatibility.”

Julie says something to him in a hushed voice, and Luke can see the urgency in her face. She wants this, maybe as much as he does. The Marshal mutters a reply, that Luke still can’t hear.

He can’t help himself. “What’s the matter Marshal? You don’t think your daughter could cut it in the ring with me?”

The Marshal gives Julie a pointed look, “Go.”

The way Julie carries herself as she steps up to the mat is almost entirely different to what he’s seen so far. She is confident, sure, borderline cocky. Luke can feel his skin practically buzzing.

“Four strikes marks a win,” the Marshal reminds them. 

Luke watches as she spins her staff around, getting into a ready position. She’s precise and elegant. He mimics her slightly, sliding his feet so his stance is wide. 

She watches him apprehensively, and in her eyes he can see her plotting a first plan of attack. Before she gets the chance, he strikes forward, his staff coming to a stop just before hitting her in the head.

“One-zero,” he says.

Immediately, she strikes out, knocking his staff out of the way and striking for his head as well. He feels the whistle of wind as she stops not even an inch away from impact. 

“One-one,” she says, and he can’t help the small smile that tugs at his lips as she returns to ready position. She’s more cautious now, watching him for some tell-tale sign that he’ll attack. She backs off a little, and he seizes the opportunity and strikes her at her back. 

“Two-one,” he says, and because he can’t help himself, “Concentrate.”

The teasing doesn’t seem to both her, because she immediately elevates her game. She circles around him, and even though they’re both trying for the upper hand, it’s  _ fun. _ They trade blows, but it feels harmless. It’s dancing; it’s playful; it’s almost like they’re performing a duet rather than sparring, all careful moves that only reflect one another; it’s light-hearted; it - 

She sends him to the ground. It  _ hurts. _

“Two-two,” she says, holding a hand out to help him up. He takes it, and can’t help but notice the way the skin-to-skin contact burns. 

_ There is something about this girl. _

They both slide into their ready positions as he tries to get his breathing under control. The Marshal standing judging them feels long forgotten.He goes for a point, but before he gets the chance she whirls out of the way. Sliding back into his stance, he has to bite his lip to stop a smile. Yeah, he wants to beat her, to prove her wrong, but there is something  _ exciting _ about her anticipating his moves. He barely knows her, but already they feel so in sync. His blood sings with it, and as he raises his staff to block an incoming blow from her, he can’t help but think  _ she’s my co-pilot she’s my co-pilot she’s my co-pilot.  _ Then she uses his own momentum to flip him around, and the force of it nearly knocks the wind from his chest. He rolls across the floor, launches himself onto one knee, ready to attack again but she’s there, staff striking just before his face. 

Between panting breaths, she says, “Three-two.”

In the back of his mind he knows he should be embarrassed, or something close to it, but all he can be is impressed. He’s sure it shows on his face, but when he’s convinced he’s looking at his co-pilot, he can’t even attempt to conceal it. 

He never thought he’d feel like this again.

Moments later, he’s back on his feet, and she advances on him with the same fervour. He strikes out again, but she intercepts his blow, blocking him mid-air with her staff, and there’s a little spark in her eye as she knocks his out of the way. He grins at her, because she has to feel it too, right? They’re  _ drift compatible. _

She whirls on him, and then it’s  _ really _ sparring, intense lashing of their staffs against one another, dancing around the mat. He can feel his breaths coming heavy in his chest, and she’s honestly the first candidate to make him even properly try. He tries to catch her ankles, sweeping his staff along the ground, but she jumps. 

All at once, they both lash out in the same move, and her staff pins his shoulders straight just as he does it to her. He can see her chest rising and falling with her breath, and he swears he can feel her heartbeat in his shoulder. 

She pushes forward, and uses the momentum to knock him on the ground, and then she has him pinned to the floor with her staff and one leg. 

He looks up at her, the way the light behind her gives her a halo-like effect, like she’s bathed in sunlight. Maybe it’s just because she kicked his ass, but she looks beautiful.

Which is not exactly a professional thing to think about his potential future co-pilot, especially considering that they would literally be  _ sharing each other’s thoughts and memories _ , but he’s never been great with the self-control.

“That’s enough. I’ve seen what I need to see.”

“So have I. She’s my co-pilot!”

Julie looks at him, surprised. He grins at her, unable to keep his excitement to himself. She returns it, albeit a slightly smaller grin, and he feels warm all the way down to his toes.

“I don’t think so,” the Marshal says.

Despite it making him feel like a petulant child, he asks, “Why not?”

“Because I said so, Mr. Patterson. Report to the Shatterdome in two hours and find out who your co-pilot will be.”

Luke looks over at Julie for back-up or something, but she just looks dejected. If it was anyone but the Marshal, he’d say something, fight his rule, insist on having Julie as his co-pilot. Asking for permission was never his style; he was much more of a beg for forgiveness type of guy. But even he knew that right now, the Marshal’s word was as close to law as they were going to get. 

Still, he can’t help but jog after Julie when she leaves the dojo.

“Julie, wait!” he calls after her, jogging to catch up. She stops in the middle of the hallway, turning to face him. If he was thinking critically, he would have realised she doesn’t  _ really _ look like she wants to talk to him, but he’s never been known for picking up on people’s feelings.

“That was insane in there!” 

He’s gripped by such an intense feeling of  _ rightness _ that he can feel himself practically vibrating. He has to stop himself from bouncing off the walls. 

“When I knocked you on your ass?”

He knows she’s joking, but he can’t lie. “Yeah! I’m not crazy, right?”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “That’s debatable.”

“Come on! I know you felt it. We are drift compatible.”

He realises all too late that he’s crowding her space, but he’s so full of excitement, he can barely contain himself. After what happened with Reggie and Alex, he never thought he’d feel this connection with anyone ever again.

When she doesn’t say anything, he tries again. “Do you know how rad this is? We could co-pilot your  _ dad’s Jaeger!” _

“Thank you for trying, Luke, really,” she says. “But there’s nothing else we can do.”

She turns around to the door behind her, and starts fumbling with the lock. Realisation dawns on him, and he has to bite his lip on a smile. “That’s my room.” 

She freezes, and goes to pass by him. His eyes follow her as she moves, almost involuntarily.

“Julie, come on! If you just try and explain to the Marshal - there’s no way he wouldn’t let you be a pilot if he knew how great you’d be!”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “And you know this how?”

“Just trust me. Come on,” he looks at her with what he knows are pleading eyes. “I can’t do this without you.”

She’s unimpressed. “Yes, you can. And I’m sorry, but you’ll have to.”

He knows the Marshal is her father, and she has to be used to following his rules, but it still hurts when she closes her door in his face.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think, or just come yell at me on tumblr or twitter @lukesjulies


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